Post by itrainmonkeys on Sept 22, 2012 16:29:14 GMT -5

Good evening, night, morning or whenever you get around to reading this announcement.

This post is being made to let every member of this fine forum know that there are going to be some changes around here. Specifically a change in administration for Inforoo.

We all know change can be scary. But sometimes it's also necessary.

(Note: There's a "too long, didn't read" version at the bottom).

Background info/History lesson:

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In March of 2004, Adam created Inforoo as a place for people planning to attend the Bonnaroo Music and Arts festival to congregate and discuss logistics, music preferences, camping tips, etc. In the olden days way before these newfangled facebooks and twitters there was a LISTSERV mailing list for Bonnaroo that was apparently a chore to read through and had other annoying drawbacks. Adam took it upon himself to open a free message board for people like him who wanted to discuss Bonnaroo in a more organized fashion. He started Inforoo and you can see here, in one of the earliest posts on the board, his enthusiam for it's growth.

Tell your friends! spread the word! I'm going to post another message to the email list in a couple of days, but I think we're growing real fast for a board thats less than 2 days old!

As of 6:29PM EST, today 3/24/04, we have 54 members, who have put up 144 posts in 25 seperate topics. On the 22nd, all those numbers were zero!

By the time the festival rolled around the message board had grown to about 500 members. Numbers continued to rise for the next few years and there was a lot of buzz on the boards around 2007 when the lineup got leaked slightly early and that drew a lot of people to the forum. As it stands now, Inforoo has 16,000 registered members. There are a good amount who don't post anymore but the fact remains that Inforoo has become THE spot to get help, advice, info about Bonnaroo (as well as many other topics and festivals).

Perhaps more important than the talk about Bonnaroo, though, is the community that we have built here. Through years of discussions and debates and arguments and lists we have created something special. Thanks to the meet ups, the helping hands, the insanely generous people, and most importantly all the active posters on this board we have created something of an internet family. Many of us hang around this place all year round, chatting about anything and everything. This is because the friends and relationships that have built up over a long period of time is greater than the root of this board. There is a bit of magic here and if you haven't experienced it just yet, please stick around - it's a wonderful place!

So...enough tooting of our own horns. Let's get down to the dirty details:

What's going on with Inforoo?

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Changes have been in the works for a while, primarily behind the scenes. The main goal here is to move Inforoo off Proboards and onto a better system. Proboards has served us well, but there are limitations that make other options much more appealing.

As we've all experienced, life can happen! Problems arose and due to some unforeseen circumstances, very important decisions needed to be made and there wasn't a large window of time to make them. We attempted to move forward with some changes, but it became clear to both us and many observant board members, that rushing these major transitions was not a good idea.

Adam, who has been an owner and administrator on these boards since he opened it, was faced with an extremely tough choice. After thinking it over and discussing all possible options with all of the moderators we came to an agreement.

Adam has decided to step away from Inforoo as an owner and administrator, but certainly not as a valued member of this amazing community. The moderators will be taking the reins from here on out. We can't thank Adam enough for the incredible place he has created for us. Without him, this community would not exist. His commitment and hard work can not be overlooked. As is natural with a group of this size, disagreements and disputes arose. That said, I think we speak for everyone when we say thank you, Adam!! We wish you the best in all future endeavors!

So what's in store for the future of Inforoo (a list of some basic changes to get the ball rolling)

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- Adam is stepping down to become a regular forum member.

- Currently, Joel (natureboy) has the "Admin" title on his account. This is in title only and it should be clear the mods stand on equal ground. So when you get pissed about something...be pissed at all of us . Don't gather your pitchforks and head to Joel's house if you disagree with something...just contact any/all moderators. Joel is our technical guru, handling the bulk of the transfer, so that is why his account is listed as the main administrator.

- Moving the board WILL happen....but it won't happen right away. We are going to take our time to make sure this is done right. We'd like to make it known that since we can't transfer all the threads and posts from proboards to a new place that the original plan was to give everyone a warning of when the proboards forum would be locked. We would keep this forum archived as it has many helpful threads but also many great memories. Obviously, we would be able to copy most of the important/helpful threads to the new place but things would be starting fresh on a new board.

- The Inforoo Shirt store had to be shut down as part of the change in management. Some other ideas will not be going forward like "Inforoo Social" and other potential "infoBLANK" forums. We hope to get a new shirt store up and running at some point.

- We have seen the desire and enthusiasm for an article/blog/reviews type of section for Inforoo, where posters can contribute their written thoughts and feelings. We like this and want to work towards this as well.

The message to all forum members:

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We on the moderating team want to thank each and every one of you for making this place what it is and voicing your opinions on matters that are important to you. We will work hard to make this place even better than it is now, while maintaining the sense of community and family that we have been able to create.

We have the titles of "moderators" but that is too technical for what we like to think we do. Our goal is to help guide the discussion while also protecting everyone from spammers, scammers, and negative/hateful posts. We hope that we can work with you all to enhance Inforoo and we are always open to new ideas. Please feel free to PM us if you have any questions or ideas or problems. We'll do our best to help. This is how excited we are about the future of Inforoo:

So that's about it for now. For the "too long, didn't read it" folks here's a summary: Inforoo has begun a new chapter. Adam has stepped down but Inforoo's moderation staff will continue to serve the community into the future. The forum will move to a much better message board system at some point...but it will not be happening right away. So no need to worry about drastic changes in a short timespan.

We'll do our best to answer any questions about this development that you have here. Please be respectful

Post by holls on Sept 22, 2012 17:01:10 GMT -5

ITM: thank you for the update!!! You and all the other mods have done a great job behind the scenes negotiating and handling all of this. I'm grateful to Adam for creating Inforoo (and I wish Adam & Heather the best of luck in future endeavors), but I agree with the others that we are headed in the right direction. KUDOS to all of you! Your hard work and devotion to this cyber home so many of us love is VERY APPRECIATED.

That said... can we remove the link to the SpreadShirt store? It pains me to look at it, knowing it's not an option now!

Post by abrakapokus on Sept 22, 2012 17:41:28 GMT -5

I hope that things will continue to be great on this board. I think Adam has done a great job and I hope that he has benefited from this message board. Yes, the members make it great, but inforoo has been had the leadership, the foresight to make the board, and given us a place to build these relationships. Good luck Adam and what a great set of Mods to take inforoo over.

Post by LoveLuckLaughter on Sept 22, 2012 21:02:22 GMT -5

^^^Agree. I wish Adam the best and hope that he continues to be a part of our community. I thank him so much for being the genesis of this wonderful family. I'm glad that the essence of what makes InfoRoo so amazing has been maintained. And I applaud the other Mods for agreeing to continue to put up with our asses.

Post by Katy Mae on Sept 22, 2012 22:28:47 GMT -5

On a lighter note, I don't think any of you guys get nearly the credit you deserve for the hard work and time you put in to this place to make it great. You all are really amazing, and none of you had to care, but you chose to. That in and of itself is truly admirable.

Post by itrainmonkeys on Sept 23, 2012 0:13:28 GMT -5

I think the real question everybody wants to know is what happens to post counts. I have way too many to start over

Already discussed between the mods, actually.

We decided for the people who care about their post count AND/OR their karma count that we would manually update it when the transition is made.

That kind of thing can't be automatic....so basically it would be a message/announcement to the board that "If you would like your posts/karma to carry over please blah blah blah here". Then we'd either start up a thread to request it or maybe set it up as "PM some mod" but either way...we know that some people want to maintain their reputations and we'll do our best to accommodate that.

I know personally, some other boards that I'm on that allow embedding videos other than youtube as well as posting some HTML elements that I don't think proboards really allows. Again, there's still a lot of research and looking into things that need to be done and I may not be the best guy to explain this

Post by gratefuled on Sept 23, 2012 7:00:12 GMT -5

From the vBulletin admin experience I've had (which I outlined in the "dissent" thread...you're into fitness?)...I can tell you that a couple of MAJOR advantages vBulletin has are its support community and its plugin library. You'll like both.

Post by gratefuled on Sept 23, 2012 7:06:46 GMT -5

Oh, and I don't know what the staff is planning for hosting, but can I recommend Media Temple? IME their service is excellent and reasonably-priced.

They've helped us through several sudden-onset problems, including a nasty denial-of-service attack that was meant to distract us from a secondary attempt to mirror our server via an FTP password crack. (There was definitely a dark jedi after us that time; the goal was apparently to gain access to the mod/admin forums, and it damn nearly worked before the MediaTemple staff stopped it.)

Post by gratefuled on Sept 23, 2012 7:43:00 GMT -5

It's really fitness.

The owner of the site, who's a full-time personal trainer, was doing a weekly live Q&A broadcast on one of the free tubes. He's a very big guy, and quick-witted, and his method of dealing with trolls/hecklers was to out-troll/heckle them. So they started following him back to the board, generally raising hell as they came. Problems escalated. We upped our security but eventually had to discontinue the broadcast. Things have since quieted down.

Post by garageland on Sept 23, 2012 12:02:17 GMT -5

I think the real question everybody wants to know is what happens to post counts. I have way too many to start over

Already discussed between the mods, actually.

We decided for the people who care about their post count AND/OR their karma count that we would manually update it when the transition is made.

That kind of thing can't be automatic....so basically it would be a message/announcement to the board that "If you would like your posts/karma to carry over please blah blah blah here". Then we'd either start up a thread to request it or maybe set it up as "PM some mod" but either way...we know that some people want to maintain their reputations and we'll do our best to accommodate that.